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Horizon: Why Did I Go Mad?; Peter Kay’s Car Share

An excellent though at times terrifying edition of Horizon sought the origins of, and potential treatments for, schizophrenia

Andrew Billen

May 3 2017, 12:01am, The Times

Rachel Waddingham has suffered hallucinations since she was sevenBBC

Horizon: Why Did I Go Mad?BBC Two★★★★☆

Peter Kay’s Car Share BBC One★★★★☆

Illness is best recalled in tranquillity, mental illness especially. This was not an option for the epidemiologist Dr David Strange, who on an excellent edition of Horizon bravely shared his psychosis with us in, as they say, real time. Strange, who owns a cupboard of anti-psychotic drugs (and drugs to undo their side-effects) and had attempted suicide, can suffer hallucinations — often of flesh-eating rats — anywhere, in Boots, in McDonald’s and in the company of more than a handful of friends.

At a café in Winchester, Strange was introduced to Richard Bentall of the University of Liverpool, who had developed a therapeutic app to monitor a patient’s mood. It sounded a…

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